[Zelandeth]

That's basically the plan - get the set up and running well enough for now, then sit down and wait for a tube to appear...if it ever does.

The white wirewound resistor on the dropper is indeed bridging a defective section - what you can't see in that picture is that it's actually blown a stinking great hole in the windings around the back of the dropper - it ain't gonna be making any intermittant contacts! I will bear the pointer about removing the wire in mind though when I get to the "tidying up" stages.

Need to do something properly to tidy that bit of the set up anyway - there's wires, wires everywhere, one of the terminals on that replacement dropper resistor is perilously close to touching the heat shield, the automotive spade connectors are a mess...and the whole thing's full of cobwebs.

As for the panel lights, removing that resistor seems to make them stay running for longer, but they do still go out.

The really annoying thing is that the set seems to be working (panel lights and broken control shafts on the 405 fine tune and power/volume control aside) perfectly fine now!

Will finish tidying up this, put a wanted ad out for a new tube, then might attack the GEC. Not so sure though, as I've no way of feeding it a signal just now.

Just figures I'd pick a set with a tube without any readily available equivialants...